Chastity-Reversed Hard Mode: Surviving as a Steel-Minded Adventurer in Another World - Chapter 06: A Maiden in Love is Just a Push-Over Kid in the Reversal World

Chapter 06: A Maiden in Love is Just a Push-Over Kid in the Reversal World

“Damn it! It’s never enough—money or strength!”

Irene slammed her mug down on the table, making her companions exchange knowing looks that said all too clearly: Here we go again.

“I think you’re doing just fine, Irene.”

“Yeah, really. Almost nobody grows this much in just a few months of adventuring.”

“Don’t treat me like a kid! I’m not a child!”

Irene puffed herself up, spitting fire with her words. But to the older members of her party, she only looked like a wolf pup trying its hardest to growl. And the fact that she got angry about being called a kid only proved she still was one. They shrugged their shoulders.

Because the truth was… Irene really was a kid.

The Great Brishav Empire’s Magna Carta set adulthood at twenty-one. Irene was probably around fourteen—definitely still a minor. Probably, because she had no way of knowing her exact age. She was a slum orphan, raised in an orphanage with no parents to tell her.

Not that it mattered much what the law said anyway. Commoners here had always started working from childhood. Especially in the slums—no family could afford to waste a single pair of hands. Kids hauled cargo, sold water, cleaned ditches, polished shoes—any odd job that didn’t need schooling. And in their free time, they’d sometimes band together to hunt weak monsters.

Big-Horned Rabbits were the perfect prey. Even children could bring them down, and tossing rabbit meat into a stew otherwise made of leftover vegetables turned it into a feast. For slum kids constantly going hungry, there was no monster more welcome than that.

Of course, slum kids could only handle Big-Horned Rabbits at best. Anything stronger was completely off-limits. The reason was simple—there was no way they could win.

High-ranked monsters could use magic. Without equipment that offered resistance, one direct hit meant instant death for a child.

Fortunately, their town was protected by solid walls, and the smarter monsters knew better than to mess with human territory. You didn’t see many wandering near the city. But if a kid did happen to run into one… the unspoken rule was: run like hell.

The guards, of course, would say, “Don’t sneak outside in the first place.” But even if a monster attacked kids right in front of them, at least half would just stand there and watch them die. Why? Because slum children had no citizenship.

The guards’ duty was to protect the city and its citizens—not people without rights. The other half of the guards might intervene, arguing that monsters near the walls needed to be driven back anyway. But even that wasn’t guaranteed. For kids in the slums, the only ones they could truly rely on were themselves.

Irene, though—she was different.

From a young age, she had possessed remarkable magical power. An old woman who lived on the edge of the slums had taught her body-strengthening spells, and Irene could unleash strength that easily surpassed grown men.

And her looks—far too beautiful for a child from the slums. Maybe she really was the illegitimate daughter of some noble. But if that was true, she had nothing to prove it.

The old woman who had taught her magic often sighed as Irene grew older, watching her beauty become more striking with each passing year.

“If you’d been born a boy, you could’ve made a killing at a brothel, y’know.”

Unfortunately for Irene, she was a girl—so no brothel would take her in.

In this world, where men were born at a ratio of one to three, brothels existed for women to play with men… or, more bluntly, to go shopping for seed.

The brothels catered to wealthy women, offering men with strong magical power and good looks. It was the perfect two-for-one deal—have some fun while also securing excellent children for the future.

As for women without money, or those who couldn’t find a husband? They went to the lowest pits of the slums—prostitution dens.

Those places were nothing more than filthy, downgraded brothels, where men were force-fed drugs to keep them hard, then lined up and forced to penetrate women one after another until every last drop of semen was drained.

The conditions were horrific, riddled with disease. Most men thrown into those hellholes didn’t last more than a few months. And of course, no one went there willingly—these were the tragic fates of men kidnapped by bandits or sold off cheap from starving villages.

≪Explanation Time!

Think of it like our world’s “glory holes” or “cheap back-alley joints.” In our world, that kind of thing is just a niche fetish hardly anyone touches. But here? Poor women rely on it just to avoid extinction!

Also, since women’s sex drives in this world are as strong as men’s in ours, they’re perfectly fine with whoever’s dick it is—so long as they get one!≫

Of course, the women who used those dens weren’t completely heartless. They did feel pity for the men. But at the end of the day, they still wanted children. Heirs were necessary. And if a boy was born, he could either be married into a good family or sold to a brothel for a fortune.

…And if another girl was born? Just dump her at the orphanage.

That was how abandoned kids piled up, and the slums kept spreading little by little.

Still, not every child raised in the slums was doomed to stay poor. Some managed to show talent, gain citizenship, and secure proper jobs.

Irene was one of those few.

Adventurers were monster hunters. Their main work was exterminating the creatures that lurked on the outskirts of cities. If you were confident in your skills, you could even challenge stronger monsters. Expanding humanity’s safe zones was seen as a righteous act, one rewarded with both honor and money.

It was brutal physical labor, and it demanded solid knowledge to use magic effectively. Irene, though, had both strength and smarts. She owed her magical learning to the old woman who had taken a liking to her and taught her a few things.

Naturally, when a dirty little slum brat barged into the guild, declaring she wanted to become an adventurer, she was about to be thrown out on the spot.

But then, by sheer coincidence, a black-haired young man happened to be there.

“Why reject her? You’re letting someone shady like me in—a complete stranger from the Far East—yet you’d throw out a child born and raised in this very city? That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

—Kyuuun.

Thanks to that, Irene was allowed to take the adventurer aptitude test. Her high potential was recognized, and as a special exception, she was even loaned proper equipment.

She then joined a party that had been short on frontliners and quickly began proving her worth as an adventurer.

Not that the party had been bottom-tier or anything. They’d simply lost their frontliner in an accident and stalled because they couldn’t find a replacement. With Irene’s talent, they now had the perfect chance to raise up a promising newcomer.

Everything was going great. At this rate, the party was guaranteed to climb even higher.

And yet—every time Irene had a drink, she cried about the same thing.

“If I don’t get stronger, Yuji’s gonna be stolen by those other girls! Nooo!”

The party leader, a mage, let out a long sigh.

“Give it up, Irene. He’s not a man you can have.”

“No way! I’ve got talent too! I’ll make Yuji my maid and protect him from them!”

“Sure, kid, you’ve got potential. Stick with us and one day we’ll be one of the guild’s top parties. Maybe you’ll even buy yourself a nice little mansion and hire a pretty maid or two. But Yuji? His marriage is already being arranged. There’s no way you’ll earn enough to ‘hire him as your maid’ before then.”

“Uuuu…”

Irene collapsed onto the table, eyes teary, her little ponytail of short red hair trembling as she sulked.

Watching her, the rest of the party quietly sipped their mugs.

“How many times have we heard this now?”

“Since she joined? Pretty much every night for the past six months.”

“Well, yeah. She became an adventurer chasing after her crush, and now that same crush is the prize in a guild-wide virginity deathmatch. Of course her brain’s fried.”

“The real problem’s her attitude. It’s fine to talk to the guy you like, but why does she always tease and mock him? No way he’s getting a good impression from that.”

Her comrades’ words stabbed her like knives, and Irene slumped even further into her seat.

“It’s just… whenever I look at Yuji’s face, I can’t figure out what to say…”

“Total brat.”

“Such a kid.”

“Classic teenage syndrome.”

“Stop calling me a kid!!”

Dismissed outright by the older members, Irene trembled where she sat, eyes watery and shoulders shaking.

≪Explanation Time!

In our world, this is like a cheeky little kid who can’t be honest with his crush, a beautiful big sister, so he covers it up with snark!

And in those “older woman × younger boy” stories, the boy’s the pushover who falls the instant she spoils him.

Oops—looks like this one’s already fallen!≫

“Also, why the hell ‘maid’? Just confess already. Tell him you like him and want to go out. That clueless Easterner would get snatched up instantly.”

“I-It’s not like that! I just… I just wanna protect him from all those lust-crazed beasts drooling over him! So, you know… if he’s my maid and stays by my side, it’ll be easier to keep him safe…”

As Irene fidgeted, nervously intertwining her slender fingers over and over, her party members just snorted into their mugs.

“And now she’s saying she just wants to protect him, that it’s not about lust.”

“Oh wow, playing knight in shining armor. How noble~”

“Yeah, classic teenage sickness.”

“I’m serious!!”

Irene’s face flushed bright red from the mix of booze and embarrassment, while her party members only shrugged as if to say, what can you do?

“Face it… that’s pure possessiveness. Filthy, 100% lust-driven emotions.”

“Join us already. You’ll soon discover how much fun it is to, y’know, relieve yourself while savoring that sweet frustration.”

“Utterly delightful. Please, open that wounded little heart wider and let me see more.”

“You adults are the worst!!”

And truly, they were the worst.
…Though, to be fair, they really were excellent mentors when it came to adventuring.